NPPC Prevails Against HSUS Attack on Animal Agriculture

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today ruled in favor of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) in its appeal to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). The court rejected HSUS’s attempt to advance an anti-meat activist agenda through an unwarranted suit designed to hurt 60,000 U.S. pork producers and undermine a farm sector critical to rural communities and that employs hundreds of thousands of Americans.

The court rejected HSUS’ attempted challenge to the National Pork Board’s 2006 federally approved purchase from NPPC of trademarks associated with the organization’s “Pork: The Other White Meat” campaign and payments associated with the agreement. While HSUS claimed it and others were injured because proceeds from the transaction were misappropriated by the National Pork Board, the pork “checkoff,” the D.C. Circuit found that HSUS and its fellow plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that they had suffered harm from the transaction, including the associated payments.

“The dismissal of this case is a win for American pork producers who depend on NPPC’s issues advocacy work and the research, education and promotional work performed by the National Pork Board,” said David Herring, a pork producer from Lillington, NC and NPPC’s president. “The real misappropriation of funds is HSUS’s continued efforts to fundraise under false pretenses while using its proceeds to attack farmers dedicated to feeding billions of people at home and abroad.”